Razz's page

Well with the release of Unearthed Arcana, DMGII, and plenty of house rules and other d20 3rd-party sourcebooks I have to say I don't believe there will be a 4E for a good...well...never! There's no need! Making a new edition would mean making everything new: the classes, rules, system, etc., etc. and I really cannot see how much better they can do with a 4E without destryoing D&D itself altogether.

If D&D were an evolutionary being, I'd have to say it has reached its evolutionary peak. From here on, D&D can only go downhill.

For those of you who still use the old animal companions rules from 3.0, I am surprised your game isn't either:

1) Bogged down too much and has taken a week to resolve combat or any situation for that matter

2) Your players to really screw you over, since if I were in your games I certainly would show you the flaws of doing that
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The current 3.5 animal companion rules is fine as it is and here is the reason. Druids (and Rangers, to an extent) have their choice of one animal companion which receives more power and special abilities depending on the animal and the effective druid levels.

On top of that, they could take the Wild Cohort feat, essentially having another animal companion though with not as much strength as would your animal companion, but effective nontheless.

Next you have spells like Charm Animal and Dominate Animal. Crafting a few wands of each, well, you have another repertoire of animals you can have at your command along with the other two. Considering the fact that these could be animals well beyond my own strengths, I'll be having a ball with such creatures.

Next is the fact that the Handle Animal skill has been clarified and improved in 3.5 I can capture animals and tame them all to my bidding, spending a few months training whatever I wish using Handle Animal, even dumb magical beasts as well. Then bring them along with me.

Next, druids can spontaneously cast Summon Nature's Ally. That's even more animals right there, or maybe some fey and elementals if I wish.

Finally, let's not forget about Wild Empathy. Exactly like Diplomacy, but only with it affecting animals and magical beasts of 1 or 2 Intelligence, grabbing a bunch of animals I made "Helpful" with Wild Empathy is another horde I could bring along.

Pretty much, I don't think you'd want me to play a druid (or ranger) in your campaigns, or anyone that figures this one out for that matter. I think it's wise NOT to include the old way of animal companions (2 HD/caster level).

Well, Yamo, I agree but I suggest something like that can easily be stated as a sidebar. Kara-Tur does fit well in any generic campaign and should be treated as such by non-FR players. If Dragon does do articles like this, I believe and hope they state in a sidebar how easy it is to incorporate it as a generic OA campaign.

As for the main meat of the article, I say the Forgotten Realms material should stay as the primary text. Faerun and Kara-Tur interact too much to exclude all Faerun information from such articles.

I think one issue of not only Dragon, but also Dungeon, should go back to Oriental Adventures and update Kara-Tur (and if they can, The Hordelands) to 3.5

They did it for Dark Sun and I think it's time for our beloved and REAL OA setting (not that horrible Rokugan gimmick) to make a comeback and prove to WotC that it will be accepted widely unlike it was 17+ years ago.

I propose Dungeon have an adventure module, and updated (like the krakentua) and new oriental adventure monsters. Like they did with Dark Sun.

As for Dragon, I'd like to see articles on Kara-Tur's history, timeline, their deities and pantheons, how each class fits into Kara-Tur, information on each region, maps (one huge foldout map would be great, like the Faerun map in the FRCS), languages, what real-life culture each region is based off of, notable and important sites, spells, magic items, feats, regional feats, a new race possibly (like using the Winning Races article in the same magazine to make an OA-style race), martial art styles, etc. Most important of all, who're the important NPCs, what're their relations with Faerun, Zhakara, The Hordelands, etc. and also what are the current events and affairs as of the year 2625/1448 (1374 D.R.), the Kara-Tur year before the slash being Shou Lung's current year and the one after being Kozakura's current year. (both started back at 2607/1430, and I believe Faerun's timeline then was 1356 D.R., maybe 1358 D.R., can't remember).

It might not be as detailed as us Kara-Tur fans hope, but it's a start and will hopefully get WotC's attention for them to actually release a full-bound hardcover book on Kara-Tur alone. I'm tired of Forgotten Realms having these huge voids in the lands of Maztica, Zhakara, Endless Wastes and most important of all, Kara-Tur.

Heh, something tells me some sort of psionics book is coming out from WotC next year...

Spellcraft article is nice and all, but how about throwing another page or 2 and call it Psicraft? It'd be nice to see more psionic material in Dragon, since it's about the only source I can rely on for psionic material rather than WotC.

I mentioned this in another thread and I agreed on there being Class Acts articles on non-core classes. New feats, prestige classes, spells, epic feats, all geared toward the non-core classes would be wonderful to see as well. The Soulknife has tons of potential from what I can see.

In total there were 5 main ones, 2 outside that spectrum. The main 5 were Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz dragons along with the other 2 published by WotC's The Mind's Eye as the Obsidian dragon. The last was the Ectoplasmic dragon, not a gem dragon, but a psionic draogn in nature.

You know what receives the LEAST attention?

GEM DRAGONS.

Yes, those beloved psionic dragons. I sure would like to see more articles pertaining to them. I hate how they get the shaft all the time (like Draconomicon and other material) like they barely exist. I think I've had enough of metallics and chromatics, time for the gems to make a stand!

No, we don't need it spelled out for us to include something in FR. We just need a sidebar for suggestions on how to make it fit. Sidebars are small and don't take up hardly any space on the page.

In Dragon issue #323, there was an article on feats mainly for the Desert and Seafaring adventurers. It stated the feats could be used as regional feats in an FR campaign....the problem was, it didn't give us a sidebar stating which feat would truly belong into each region. While I could sit down and cross-examine each feat with each region piece by piece, that takes up time I normally cannot spare (nor should anyone else).

Clearly those feats HAD to be regional feats, they were way too good to be General feats. (for those who have Dragon #323, you will know what I mean). A sidebar detailing which feat belonged to which region would've been very useful and saved a lot of times for us DMs that can't truly spare any time to properly fit those feats into their proper regions.

That was just one example. I have seen prestige classes so clearly defined and specific that it was very, very hard to place it into an FR campaign. I can't remember which ones, but they were there and they were a nuisance as I sat there doing what I could to make it fit an FR game.

But a sidebar could've fixed it in 2 seconds. So, that's my reason for wanting the FR/Eberron sidebars (I don't play Eberron but it'd sure be nice if it were there for both types of players)

One thing I would like to see them do is place sidebars informing us how to place the articles into Forgotten Realms campaign or and Eberron one. They used to do that but it's slowly fading out the magazine, which was bad cause those sidebars would make FR people happy to see how they could fit a prestige class, monster or whatever into their games.

I as well would like to see more epic content in dragon. Even if it is only feats. Any type of Epic support would be great.

Also, you need a gnoll avatar!

I agree, both Epic and Psionic support should be in the magazine. And the occasionaly Planar article as well.

I don't believe one wild card class would do it. You have to remember, there're 17 new classes published by WotC (not including the ones published by Dragon), and so to make it one wild card class a month wouldn't really make much people happy since a particular class would have to wait almost over a year to make an appearance in Class Acts.

I say each issue should have a random selection of the classes presented. Not only is it more fair, but there is one fact. There are tons of new stuff to spice up your 3.5 PHB classes...but the amount of material to spice up the new ones published like Swashbuckler, Spirit Chaman, etc. rather pales in comparison to the PHB classes.

Shade wrote:

3.) Compiliation lists. It would be nice for DMs to be able to reference an article that lists all the monsters from official products that can be summoned via a summon monster or summon nature's ally spell. Same goes for spells that can be made permanent. I'm sure other compilation lists could be beneficial.

I love that idea!

There was a Dragon issue that did that. It listed monsters from MMII, MM, and MoF that can be summoned via summon monster and summon nature's ally.

And another thing I'd like to see is CLASS ACTS covering the other core classes besides the Player's Handbook normal 11. In the new Class Acts series, I would like to see articles on the following classes published by WotC:

---Psion, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, Wilder (Expanded Psionics Handbook)
---Samurai, Shaman, Shugenja, Sohei, Wu Jen (Oriental Adventures)
---Healer, Marshal, Warmage (Minatiure's Handbook)
---Hexblade, Samurai, Swashbuckler (Complete Warrior)
---Favored Soul, Shugenja, Spirit Shaman (Complete Divine)
---Erudite, Ninja, Urban Druid, Sha'ir (pages of Dragon)

I sure would also love to see more articles on Oriental Adventures. Not everyone wants to buy AEG's Legend of the Five Rings d20 to use in their OA games. Very few do.

What I would like to see is this:

PSIONICS: A monthly psionic article, due to WotC's infrequent integration of psionics into D&D's core for those of us who love psionics and would like to see more and more of it. New feats, prestige classes, psionic powers, psionic monsters, psionic items, and even the occasional fluff material for those with psionic campaigns or would like to include psionics into their games.